So much wild beauty at Rockwood

This past August, when I was driving around in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, I revisited Rockwood Hall State Park, which was simply Rockwood to us when we hung out there as teenagers. The park, which is located in the town of Sleepy Hollow, faces out onto the Hudson River; you can read more about its history here: http://www.nynjtc.org/hike/rockwood-hall-sleepy-hollow. I've written about Rockwood before in this blog, about how beautiful it was many years ago, and how if we just wanted to get away from it all for a few hours, that was the place we drove to so that we could walk and talk, especially during the summers. One of my last hikes through the park before I moved away from Tarrytown was during the early spring, when the grounds and trees were just starting to recover from a cold winter. The park hasn't changed much in all these years; in fact, if anything, it's more overgrown and wilder than it was before. One thing that was new was that there were wooden benches placed here and there for those who want to just sit and rest or read, as I saw one young man doing. But it's the wildness about it that I love--the overgrown bushes and trailing vines, the many trees, the open meadows, the lush greenery, and the gorgeous views of the Hudson River. I met one or two other visitors on my walk, but otherwise I had the park mostly to myself on this sunny August afternoon. I enjoyed being alone on a warm summer day, happy to be outdoors and to be back in a place that meant a lot to me as a teenager. I'm including some photos of Rockwood as it looked in August, as well as a photo collage of Rockwood from over thirty years ago, taken during the month of March.

Hudson River and view of the lovely Palisades

Tappan Zee Bridge in the distance

Goodbye Palisades, Hello LG Tower!

Please join the fight to stop LG from building its high-rise tower in Englewood Cliffs NJ, that will RUIN the Palisades. This fight can be won if enough people voice their opinions, boycott LG and step up to the plate to fight. Let's win this for future generations. Because if we lose this fight, the beauty of this historic natural park/landmark will be destroyed forever.
 

Protect the Palisades--Don't let LG win

In recent months, I have become an avid online supporter of protecting the Hudson River Palisades from those who would destroy its natural beauty. I've signed my share of online petitions, shared them on Facebook and tweeted them on Twitter. There comes a time in each person's life when he or she has to take a stand. This is my time. I just never figured that it would take the form of environmental preservation issues, but it has. No apologies for that--I'm quite happy about it. I grew up in a Hudson River valley town--Tarrytown--and looked across the river for years at the beautiful Palisades, that were always especially lovely in the autumn. Talk about the colors of the foliage; you didn't need to travel to New England to witness the gorgeous colors. But like so many people, I may have taken that view for granted. And now it may change unless more people act to stop what is happening.

In short, the fight is to stop the multinational electronics manufacturer LG (a South Korean company with headquarters in Seoul) from building a high-rise office building on the Palisades that will ruin the natural beauty of the Palisades and open for more development along that lovely ridgeline. The alternative suggestion is for them to build a low-rise office building, but they are refusing to consider that because they were granted permission to build their high-rise building by the borough of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey and its mayor Joe Parisi. Hence the fight.

Please support this fight against LG. You can read more about this on the following sites:

http://www.protectthepalisades.org/

https://www.facebook.com/ProtectThePalisades

https://twitter.com/StopLGTower

http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2013/07/protect_the_palisades_editoria.html

http://www.nynjtc.org/issue/protecting-palisades-ridgeline